Sommaire: arts communautaires francophones au Québec/ Summary: francophone community arts in Québec

 

by Alexa

Sommaire de la recherche du projet ToileDesArts en arts communautaires francophones au Québec   

le 21 avril, 2010, Alexa de Repentigny-MacAulay  

De notre liste de 63 projets, ressources, organismes, et programmes en arts communautaires, nous avons trouvé 11 ressources et 27 groupes d’art communautaire au Québec jusqu’à maintenant, dont la plupart sont uniquement francophones. 

Nous avons trouvé plusieurs ressources qui énumèrent ou appuient de nombreux projets, organismes, et programmes d’arts communautaires, par exemple, Engrenage Noir-Levier et Inspire Art. Nous avons aussi trouvé de merveilleux projets qui améliorent l’accès aux arts en offrant des services d’approche, comme le Wakiponi Mobile, une caravane qui se rend dans plusieurs réserves autochtones au Québec afin d’enseigner les arts médiatiques aux jeunes autochtones. D’autres, tels le Café Graffiti et le centre St-James, effectuent des activités dans des studios d’art pour les sans-abri ou les jeunes et les adultes dans la rue. L’organisme Jeunes musiciens du monde se distingue des autres par sa vaste programmation en musique pour les nouveaux immigrants et pour la communauté. Nous avons aussi contacté au moins 8 différents centres d’amitié autochtones, et la plupart offrent de la programmation gratuite ou accessible en danse, tambour, médicine traditionnelle, perlage et travail sur le cuir. 

Les arts communautaires francophones au Québec ont fait l’objet de nos recherches les plus approfondies jusqu’à maintenant; il y a tellement de groupes d’arts communautaires à Montréal que nous en avons gardé plusieurs pour des “recherches ultérieures” afin de continuer nos recherches ailleurs au Québec. Nous attendons toujours une réponse de 13 autres sources et nous continuons à identifier des groupes au Nunavik. Continuez de visiter notre site pour des mini profils qui mettront l’accent sur les groupes d’art communautaire que nous avons déjà identifiés! 

Summary of ArtBridges’ research for francophone community arts in Québec  

by Alexa de Repentigny-MacAulay, Francophone Research Assistant,
April 21st, 2010  

We sourced 63 community arts projects, resources, organizations and programs and found 11 resources and 27 community arts groups in Québec so far, the majority of which were solely francophone in its language of service.  

We found a lot of resources that list or support various community arts projects, resources, organizations, and programs, such as Engrenage Noir-Levier and Inspire Art. We also found some great projects that are providing access to arts through extensive outreach, like the Wakiponi Mobile, a caravan that travels to reserves in Québec to teach media arts to indigenous youth. Others, such as Café Graffiti and the St James drop-in centre, open up art studios to homeless or street involved youth and adults. Jeunes musiciens du monde stood out because of its extensive music programming for new immigrants and the community. We contacted at least 8 Native Friendship Centres, and most of them had free or accessible arts programming with traditional dance, drumming, medicine, or beading and leatherwork.  

We did our most extensive francophone research so far in Québec; there were so many community arts groups in Montréal that we decided to leave a lot of them to “secondary research” and move on to the rest of Québec. We’re still waiting to hear back from 13 sources, and are continuing to identify community arts groups in Nunavik. Look for our mini profile posts as we highlight community art centres and programs that we’ve found so far!  

Profile: Engrenage Noir/LEVIER (Montreal)

“Engrenage Noir / LEVIER is a Montreal-based non-profit community and activist arts support organization intended to stimulate dialogue about healthy interdependence and ethical responsiveness while encouraging artistic creation addressing the systemic causes of poverty.” (web) LEVIER has been co-directed since its inception in 2001 by Johanne Chagnon and Devora Neumark. Johanne is an artist with many years experience in public intervention and amongst the founding members of ESSE arts + opinions, a Québecois cultural journal that she edited for 20 years. Devora is an interdisciplinary artist and has experience with violence reduction community work. She is now doing her PhD at Concordia University’s Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture, on the role that beauty plays in the (un)making of home relative to forced displacement.

Devora explained that “LEVIER” means a leaver, and that this is an important symbol for the organization. Its mandate is to support community and humanist activist art projects in the process of becoming self-sustaining. It is a resource that provides advocacy, training and funding support.

Engrenage Noir / LEVIER works with projects and organizations that serve older youth and adults.

Projects which get supported by Engrenage Noir / LEVIER receive training, grant writing, funding and administration help. Previously supported project participants, in turn, become the trainers for subsequent programs. Engrenage Noir / LEVIER works on ethics and group dynamics, with the outcome of developing stronger and healthier communities.

Profile: UrbanArts (Toronto)

UrbanArts is a charitable community arts organization that was founded in 1988 as “Art York.” In 2002 the organization refocused its services to addresses the many needs of local youth in the community it serves. Its mission is to enhance community building by engaging youth through the arts. Its mandate is to link community organizations and members with local artists and residents.

The catchment area is the former City of York, with a special focus on Weston-Mt. Dennis, one of Toronto’s 13 “priority neighborhoods”. The language of service is English. The centre works with children and youth ages 8-29. The average number of participants are 10-30 per day and 300-400 per year. The hours of operation are M-F 9:30am to 9:00pm. Programs are mostly run after school and evenings, with exception to the summer when day long programs are offered. The arts disciplines offered are music, visual, dance, theatre, spoken word, photography as well as leadership training.

Urban Arts is really good at engaging young people in arts and community building as well as spreading the word about the value community arts and the talented individuals within it. Participants are involved, engaged and invested in the centre.

One of the special things that they are known for is their mobile recording units that is part of the Beats.Mind.Movement program. They take the mobile units out into the community and with these six units they provide programming for youth who don’t typically have access to these music programs, laptops, headphones. UrbanArts also has a fully equipped in-house studio where youth can access more intense music programming. All the recordings are original works, youth create beats, write their own lyrics and create compilation CDs. UrbanArts also helps youth with the business component of music making and have CD release parties, performance opportunities, and photo shoots for album covers.

News: International ArtBridging

 

Here’s a recent article “ Finding Musical Sanctuary in the Slums of Caracas”  that was written up in the Toronto Star newspaper on Saturday (April 24^th) about El Systema by William Littler.

This free music program for youth in the Caracus, Venezuelan slums has become globally renowned and as a result Canadians are connecting with it in numerous ways. One example that Littler points out is that it “has champions …including those in St. John, N.B., and Ottawa who have established youth orchestra programs inspired by what has happened in Venezuela.” 

Littler talks about the benefits of the music program on the lives of the youth participants which include: life skills development, respect, and self-discipline. This is a valuable outcome of community development through the arts, even though less than 10 per cent of these students become professional musicians- the importance of this complex program is not in the amount of musicians that it creates but the positive social change that it has brought to the youth of Venezuela and also the inspiration it has provided for many across the globe. 

“Why do you have to be so good?!”

 

I am getting compassion fatigue listening to your stories. The small part-time staff group at ArtBridges has been calling you and interviewing you with a questionnaire over the past 4 months, building profiles about your community arts centres/programs/resources. In the course of about 45 minutes (our shortest interview was about 25 minutes, a couple of our longest- an hour and a half) you tell us about your community arts centre/programs. Wow. I woke up this morning exhausted thinking about it. Why? Because I think we, the listeners of your stories, hear the immensity of your tasks, of your missions, your challenges as well as your resounding successes. Why do you have to be so darn good?!  And we are moved and awestruck, every single time. We debrief, take a walk and shake our heads, saying “unbelievable, what incredible work they do.” And I realized this morning that there is a similar thread in all of your stories, we hear it over and over again. That’s why I woke up today with compassion fatigue and needing a beer. (Don’t worry, I have my morning coffee!)

You are compassionate about your people/your community art centres/programs’ participants. You expect excellence. You are articulate (a lot of your time is spent writing grants, funding proposals and reports and promoting your work). Your time is important – you have constant deadlines. You are a pioneer, and an innovator, even if you are not the founder you are pushing limits, and designing new programs/projects that your centre or your community has never done before. You emanate originality – no one is doing what you are doing in your community. You are fiercely protective about your centre, you will do anything to keep the doors open, to be in good standing. You believe that what you and your staff are doing is the best possible use of time and energy. You have a keen sense of social justice. You radiate joy and happiness from your work, even though you are bogged down with fundraising. You would do so much more if donations were higher, there is no limit to the extent and reaches of your work, except for funding.

OMG, at one centre out west, a staff’s mom kicked in $35,000 to help secure the mortgage for a community arts studio for adults with disabilities. At another, down east, a staff volunteers to drive tens of kilometers to pick up art so that people who have a hard time getting out of their houses/communities can have a chance to exhibit their art work at a gallery. In the financial capital of Canada, dedicated program staff at an inner-city community arts centre forgo pay during the recession and temporarily receive compensation of food vouchers and coupons for art supplies in order to keep the doors of their centre open.

We have never talked with anyone bored, tired, cynical, ambivalent, defeated, lacking creative ideas, or looking for a better place to be. But you think about it. You dream and plot about running off to the ocean side, being lazy, getting a pedicure, working in a for-profit environment, earning big bucks and not worrying so much. Oh sorry, that’s me I’m talking about. That’s my little dream. Sorry, where was I? OMG, back to work, we have to churn out a dozen fundraising proposals today! Have a great day, everyone, and thanks for sharing your amazing stories, you keep us coming back to the desk everyday, because you’re changing lives for the better in your community and across Canada, and don’t you forget it!  (-S.C. for ArtBridges)

Reminder: Upcoming Conference hosted by Common Weal Community Arts Inc. May 14-16

“Connect: towards a socially-engaged aesthetic”

Click here for the brochure!

Common Weal is a community arts organization in Saskatchewan.

Conference: Arts for Community Engagement (Halifax)

Registration opens today! Click here to register for the conference.

Mini Profil: Café-Graffiti (Montréal)

Mini Profil: Café-Graffiti
Position: Organisme à but non lucratif
Communauté visée pour la programmation d’art: Jeunes
Discipline d’art: arts visuels/arts médiatiques/danse
Langue: Français
Région: Montréal Métropolitain
Objectif de la programmation d’art: Le Café Graffiti est une famille sociale, un milieu de vie pour des jeunes marginalisés qui apprennent à vivre leur art, à l’exprimer et à prendre leur place dans la société. Le Café Graffiti accueille les jeunes cherchant à se bâtir une identité qui correspond à leurs talents et leurs ambitions. Le Café Graffiti devient une sorte de gérant d’artiste pour ces jeunes qui peuvent ainsi gagner leur vie à partir de leur art et de leur talent.
Contact: Raymond Viger, directeur

Veuillez s.v.p. visiter la carte Google pour l’information de contact.

Visual Arts in Minority Francophone Communities / Les arts visuels dans les communautes francophones minoritaires

As we were researching Francophone community arts in Nova Scotia recently, we googled upon a report written by Rachel Gauvin and Marc Haentjens, in 2001 for the Canada Council for the Arts and the Department of Canadian Heritage: Visual Arts in Minority Francophone Communities. We found that it provided us with an overall background about Francophone artists’ access to resources across Canada, including galleries, artist run centres, support, training and education. Issues and topics that are addressed include: artistic communities, access to public funding, access to exhibition space, opportunities to gather, opportunities for marketing, visibility and representation. We kept coming back to the report, though it’s a few years old, as it is rich with sources, ideas, research and information that is still relevant, so we thought we’d share it here: Visual Arts in Minority Francophone Communities

“ The study had several objectives: to provide a description of Francophone artists in minority Francophone communities, to document the conditions in which they practice their art, while drawing some comparisons with majority communities (in Quebec and English-speaking Canada), and to draw some conclusions from these observations about the needs of Francophone artists in minority Francophone communities and the approaches that could be devised to meet them.” ( p.1)

 

Récemment, durant notre recherche pour des groupes d’arts communautaire francophones en Nouvelle-Écosse, nous avions trouvé un rapport intitulé Visual Arts in Minority Francophone Communities, écrit en 2001 par Rachel Gauvin et Marc Haentjens pour le Conseil des arts du Canada et le Ministère du patrimoine canadien. Nous avons trouvé qu’il nous fournit un contexte général sur l’accès aux ressources disponibles pour les artistes francophones à travers le Canada, par exemple, l’accès au support, à la formation et à l’éducation. Les sujets et les problèmes addressés comprennent: les communautés artistiques, les galeries d’art, les centres d’artistes autogérés, ainsi que l’accès aux fonds publiques, l’accès aux lieux d’exposition d’art, les possibilités de se rassembler, de faire du marketing, d’accroître la visibilité du groupe,  et de se représenter. Nous continuons de consulter le rapport même s’il a été écrit il y a quelques années, puisqu’il est riche en sources, en idées, en recherche, et en informations qui sont encore pertinentes. Le texte n’est pas traduit, mais le lien au document anglais se trouve ici: Visual Arts in Minority Francophone Communities.

“Les objectifs de l’étude étaient nombreuses: de fournir une description des artistes francophones dans les communautés francophones défavorisées, de documenter leurs conditions de travail, et cependant, de les comparer avec les communautés favorisées (au Québec et dans le secteur anglophone du Canada), et d’en tirer des conclusions sur ces observations sur les besoins de artistes francophones dans les communautés francophones défavorisées et les approches qui doivent être formulées afin de les atteindre.” (p.1)

Story: Stephen Leafloor, the Canadian Floormasters and BluePrintForLife.

“We do these five day intense workshops, 8 hours a day, blood sweat and tears with the kids. Stretching with them, working with them, teaching them how to do- spin[s] on their back. And we also, progressively- as relationships develop with the kids- we do these intensive social work talks that are really drilled down to beat the specific issues that are going on in that community.”

Stephen Leafloor from the documentary “Arctic Hip Hop” by Les Productions des collines inc. Broadcasted April 19th, 2008 http://www.pcollines.com/arctichiphop.html

Stephen Leafloor (AKA Buddha) has a Masters in Social Work and is an experienced and renowned Hiphop artist who is part of the Canadian Floormasters.